Muslims and the Daily Star

During November, only seven different topics appeared as the front page lead on the Daily Star and Daily Star Sunday. Here's the list, together with the number of times they appeared:

The X Factor - 12 days
Katie Price and/or Peter Andre - 6 days
Muslims - 3 days
Footballers - 3 days
Royal Wedding - 3 days
I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here - 2 days
Gordon Ramsay - 1 day

So for almost half the month, half-true (at best) stories about reality TV shows dominated the Star's front page. Another ten front pages were wasted on the sex lives and family feuds of celebs, chefs and footballers. Three front pages were devoted to the Royal Wedding.

The only other stories splashed on the front page were about Muslims, and they all fitted the Star's usual agenda:



Why is it that the only times the Star ran with what might be called non-celebrity news, it's negative stories about Muslims?

Take a look at that last headline. For one thing, there was no actual, physical 'knife attack' but some disgusting, bullying threats posted on Facebook. So the headline isn't really true.

But, as Minority Thought highlighted, look how it is 'Muslim' kids (or 'thugs', as they seem to prefer) against a 'Brit' kid.

The Mail's report on the same incident carried the headline:


Why the need to talk about 'Brits' and 'whites' as separate from Muslims?

Them and us, us and them.

And when the Sun wrote about the story, the 'white girl' was mentioned and the blame was placed solely on 'five Muslim schoolboys.'

This singling out occurred in two other stories in recent weeks.

When a pig was removed from an Early Learning Centre (ELC) play set, the Sun's headline said it was for 'religious reasons' and, in the story, claimed it was because the pig might:

upset Muslim and Jewish parents.

But as Exclarotive pointed out, the Mail's headline mentioned only one religion:


(The statement from ELC said: ‘We have taken the decision to reinstate the pigs and will no longer sell the set in international markets where it might be an issue.’)

The other story was about Rochdale's Christmas lights, which had a small mention on the front page of the Daily Star on 19 November under the ludicrous headline 'Christmas 'nicked' by Muslims.'

Had it been 'nicked'? No. But Rochdale Council had decided to put some 'Happy Eid' and 'Happy Diwali' lights up with the Christmas ones. So nothing had been 'nicked' and the Star could have run 'Christmas 'nicked' by Hindus' if they'd wanted. But they didn't.

As for the poppy burning on Remembrance Day, here's what Richard Littlejohn said in the Mail:

They looked like the same crowd demonstrating outside the Old Bailey last week when that Muslim madwoman was convicted of stabbing MP Stephen Timms.

Well, except that there were only three people outside the Old Bailey, and between 30 and 50 at the poppy burning. He went on:

Yet although 50 people took part in this atrocity, there were only three arrests - and judging by the pictures it was the counter-demonstrators from the so-called English Defence League who had their collars felt.

In fact, eight people were arrested including two of the Muslims protestors.

But while the poppy burning incident got acres of media coverage, some of the reactions to it have not.

Press Not Sorry published two posts showing the comments left on the English Defence League's Facebook page, where the home address of one of the Muslim protestors was, apparently, published. But the vile threats left on Facebook - to kill this protestor, to torture him, to burn him, his house and his family - didn't make the Star's front page. Or any other page.

And if the Star was interested in what Muslims do with poppies, they could have reported on the £20,963 raised by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Youth Association's poppy appeal drive in Croydon. The local paper said the group was 'singled out for praise' by the Royal British Legion.

Their efforts received a small mention in the Sun, but was ignored elsewhere.

A spate of incidents in Portsmouth have also been largely ignored. In the days following the poppy burning:

An imam in Portsmouth has said he is saddened his mosque has been targeted twice in two days after remembrance poppies were burnt in London.

A poppy was painted on the front of the Jami mosque, on Victoria Road North in Southsea, on Friday and on Saturday 100 people staged a demonstration outside.

Hampshire police said there had been no arrests but that they would continue to monitor the situation.

Muhammad Muhi Uddin said he condemned Thursday's poppy burning.

And then:

A Muslim academy in Portsmouth has been the target of two hate crimes in the past fortnight, police have said.

In the first incident, a brick with a racist message on it was thrown into the Portsmouth Muslim Academy, on Old Commercial Road, on 13 November.

A beer bottle was then thrown through a window at the front of the building last Friday.

But neither the Star, Mail or Express decided these events or the poppy-selling efforts of young Muslims was important enough to tell their readers. Why not?

The situation at the Star has led to Nick Lowles of Hope Not Hate writing to the rag's editor, Dawn Neesom, to ask that they 'tone down the shrill'. He explains:

Our first target is the Daily Star. We've gone through the past seven years of the newspaper and found hundreds of negative articles about Muslims - and very few positive. Many of the articles over-exaggerate the importance of tiny Muslim extremist groups while ignoring more mainstream Muslim opinion and use the words of these extremists to smear an entire faith. On other occasions they print inaccurate or slanted articles that whip up fear and mistrust.

We can only hope that this campaign for more responsible journalism has some effect. Until then, we will have to hope that the Star sticks to the pointless 'celebrity' tittle-tattle.

The Express, the Star and angry mobs

Minority Thought has done an excellent job in looking at today's overblown Express front page headline and story.

The Express and its sister paper the Daily Star have tried to create a division between 'Muslims' and 'us' many times before. And the Express has form in trying to make the pronouncements of a few Muslims representative of the whole religion, too.

And in this case, 'a few' is right. Despite the Express using emotive terms such as 'angry mob' and 'another demonstration raged outside' it appears only three people were involved and, apart from shouting, all they did was wave around some bits of A4 paper with homemade slogans printed out in black and red capital letters.

By contrast, the demonstrations of the 'angry mob' called the English Defence League don't get mentioned on the front page of the Express. Their demos are bigger, involve people who hide their identity and usually end with people being arrested. Apparently, the Express isn't so concerned about that.

Mor, indeed, is the Daily Star, which has often taken a quite uncritical line on the EDL, under headlines such as 'Case for the Defence'. Recently, the Star's coverage of the EDL's plans to march in towns that ban Christmas (yes, really...) was praised by one EDL-supporting blogger.

Minority Thought sums up the Express' article perfectly:

The Express sees Muslims as a homogeneous mass that is in complete agreement with the ramshackle fanatics at its fringes. The headline is a dog-whistle signal for the idea that "Muslims" disapprove of "us British"...

That there are Muslim extremists who say such things is beyond a doubt. However, the Express' decision to make this the key focus of the story, along with the language used in the headline, is an attempt to imply that these shouts are in some way an expression of what every Muslims thinks about the British.

* Minority Thought has also taken the Express to task recently over another 'health and safety bans...' myth.

The Express claimed that a ten-year-old swimmer had been 'banned from wearing googles because of health and safety'.

Usually these health and safety stories are about people being forced to wear goggles. But this one isn't true either - the advice (not ban) is that kids who swim should get used to eye contact with water. Health and safety had nothing to do with it.

Attack on Muslims graves ignored by newspapers

Twenty Muslim graves in Southern Cemetery in Manchester were vandalised at the end of last week. The BBC reports:

Staff found the Muslim section of the cemetery littered with broken headstones on Friday morning.

Det Con Rob Southern said: "Sadly, we are treating this as a hate crime. This sort of mindless, racist behaviour must be utterly condemned."

It appears that none of the national newspapers covered the story. The Mail did report on the desecration of a World War One cemetery in France just a month ago. But not this.

Given that the English Defence League are planning to protest in Manchester later this week, there would appear to be a big news story here. Why is it being ignored?

Richard Desmond and the far-right

Many thanks to Claude at Hagley Road to Ladywood for highlighting a recent Daily Star article which seemed little more than a recruiting ad for the English Defence League (EDL).

Or make that 'ads' because this began a day earlier than first noted.

On Wednesday 23 September the Star ran this:
(Pic found online, the original article has been removed but a cached version is here)

The headline stands out immediately. Could it be any more sympathetic? It's as if the Star thinks this band of suspiciously balaclava-clad men are simply misunderstood innocents.

Of course, if a Muslim woman went around with her face covered the Star would be the first to say they're up to no good. Like the 96% of Star readers who demanded the burkha be banned back in June. And when Star reporter Richard Peppiatt dressed in a burkha for a day, he came to the conclusion:

if you can’t share a smile with a stranger, then what chance do we have of living together in harmony?

But that doesn't apply to the EDL, apparently.

The main pic shows them burning a swastika flag to 'prove' they aren't fascists or Nazis.

Quite how putting on a balaclava and setting fire to something is meant to improve their image is a mystery, but the Star is doing its best to help them.

The article includes a series of quotes from an anonymous EDL spokesman, which begins with a 'some of our best friends...'-type statement:

'We are not racist. We’ve made this film with our black members, and we also welcome any moderate Muslims.'

There isn't much in the way of a counter-argument, save for two sentences, at the end, by a spokesman from the Department of Communities and Local Government.

And then there's the Star poll, which asks 'Has the English Defence League got it right?' eventhough it's not immediately obvious what 'it' is.

The EDL say they are merely 'peacefully protesting against militant Islam' and highlighting 'unrestrained extremist Islam in the UK.'

But watch this video from the recent EDL march in Birmingham, which begins with a deliberately offensive and provocative chant about Allah, and later one man repeatedly shouts 'I hate Pakis more than you'. Another skinhead is seen doing a Nazi salute and elsewhere a placard reading 'No more mosques' was wielded.

Claims from the EDL that they are not anti-Islam, or racist, are clearly not to be believed.

(See also Unite Against Fascism, Jason Parkinson, and Richard Bartholomew's post on one of the EDL's videos, a video which 5CC also wrote about in terms of their use of tabloid headlines.)

On their website homepage they have a short film about an upcoming march and you can tell how extremist they are because Melanie Phillips pops up in it.

Anyway, back to the Star and on Thursday, the results of their poll were announced - 99% of readers agreed that the EDL has 'got it right'.

So the Star and its readers are totally supporting this vile behaviour.

This was accompanied by another full page feature on the group:
(Again, pic found online)

This second article - like the first - was made up of little more than unedited, uninterrupted EDL spokesman quotes, with a token line at the end from Unite Against Fascism.

This was accompanied by yet another poll asking 'Should the EDL become a recognised political party?' Why would the Star be asking that? I don't know what the results were but it was probably an overwhelming 'yes'.

The headline takes the EDL's claim that 'All colours and creeds are backing crusade' as unquestionably accurate, although narrows it down to 'Muslims' support' online. The story states:

The English Defence League last night claimed it had been swamped with messages of support from all races... The EDL, which claims it is defending British values against Muslim extremism, received hundreds of new registrations and postings on its website.

The anonymous EDL spokesman says:

We’ve had Sikhs, Hindus, black people, Jews and even Muslims contacting us.

Of course, 'contacting' them doesn't mean supporting them. They might have been telling the EDL where to shove their Nazi salutes.

But that claim about 'hundreds of new registrations' raises an eyebrow - why would the EDL have this sudden surge of interest?

The EDL spokesman explains:

The article about our activities has produced an amazing response.

Really? So the EDL claims to have boosted its support thanks to sympathetic coverage in the Daily Star.

They must be so proud.

This nasty, racist national 'newspaper' has long flirted with the far-right and taken the line that England is under siege from foreigners. It has a completely anti-minority agenda. There have been front pages which have taken an 'us and them' line more blatantly than any other paper.

And its sister paper the Express is sticking BNP slogans on its cover the same day as the first EDL article appeared in the Star.

Is Richard Desmond now just running recruiting rags for the far-right?